Meanwhile, other folks turn their focus on achieving something specific, getting a featured snippet on Google. Read on to learn what is a featured snippet. You’ll also learn how to improve your chances of becoming Google’s featured snippet below.

What is a Featured Snippet?

Chances are when you’ve searched something on Google before, you’ve seen a result enclosed in a box. These are what featured snippets are. At first glance, there seems to be nothing to set them apart aside from their special enclosure.

So, what makes featured snippets so great?

Featured snippets are often referred to as position by SEO enthusiasts and for good reason. They’re named so because no matter how good the organic search optimization of the other top results is, featured snippets will always appear on top of them. They can also help you appear in voice searches as well.

As you can tell, this gives a ton of advantages for anyone becoming a featured snippet. For one, becoming featured boosts the credibility of your website. This is because people tend to put their trust in the first results they see on Google.

Becoming featured may also boost the clicks your site gets. Being first makes stealing potential traffic of other top search results achievable. This will help your website grow and become a natural top result by itself.

What are the Different Types of Featured Snippets?

There are different kinds of featured snippets on Google. Some may not notice their differences at first glance, but learning them will help you structure the featured snippet that you can use for your intended audience.

The first featured snippet you should know about is the Rich Answers or Instant Answers. These are snippets that often only have 1-2 sentences of general knowledge within. For example, they contain answers to “How far away is the Sun” or “How old are the Great Pyramids”.

These snippets often don’t have any link to any website since they’re considered public domain. So, you can imagine that these won’t help much with traffic generation. If you want to generate traffic with this, you should consider expanding upon this to make a paragraph snippet.

Paragraph snippets are those that contain a brief explanation/history for typical searches. These often link back to Wikipedia because they’re a popular resource. You can take its place though by improving your SEO through writing content regarding the topic.

Another kind of featured snippet is the table snippet. These are often used for comparison for different variables. These are popular among educational websites and the like.

The last major type of featured snippet is the list-type snippet. These are the most diverse kinds of snippets you’ll see on Google. They range from tutorials to statistics and even cover lists from different sites.

Optimize Your “How To” Keywords

The phrase “how to” is the most common phrase people type in when using search engines. Often, phrases that include these words are what people call long-tail keywords. These are keywords that often target a niche since they tend to be more specific than shorter ones.

Keywords like these are also often used for tutorials and such. For example, let’s use our current topic, Google’s featured snippets. People will often want to learn something on Google, so they’re likely to type something along the lines of “How to get a featured snippet on Google”.

Answer Specific Questions in Your Content

The main reason people type those kinds of searches on Google is to learn. So, you should never forget to answer their questions about what you’re writing. This doesn’t only make sure that they get their fill of knowledge, it also improves your snippet chances.

Google has dealt with a lot of black hat SEO tactics before. These are the tactics that exploit the lack of SEO guidelines. Often, content written by people using black hat SEO tactics bears no relevance to their topic.

So, Google came up with a bot in an update that read the content of blog posts and such. This determines whether the content is relevant to their keywords or not. If they deem it irrelevant, they scrap the page and don’t show it in the SERP.

Conduct Research Using Popular Q&A Portals

If you’re having trouble thinking of topics to cover, you may want to consider looking at Q&A portals. These include popular websites like Yahoo, Quora, and Answer the Public. Most people often turn to websites like these when top search results aren’t enough for them.

This is also a good idea since you may find what questions get asked often. You can use this to come up with snippet topics that are in high demand. The only thing downside of doing this is that other content creators are doing the same.

Have an FAQ or Q&A Page on Your Website

Another way you can gather questions to cover for snippet ideas is by having a Q&A page. There are some advantages in doing this instead of going to popular question sites. For instance, this helps you build a relationship with your audience.

Doing this also allows you to cover the topics that your niche will be likely to ask. Chatting with them helps you understand what your demographic likely has trouble with. This allows you to create content that your future demographics will look up as well.

Use Different Types of Content Structures

As mentioned above, there are different types of featured snippets. Using the appropriate type for your blogs will ensure you can get the featured slot.

Another reason why you should do this is to expand your coverage. Most of the time, readers have a preferred blog type. Branching out to cover different snippet types increases the chances of getting clicks.

Remember that featured snippets show what kind of structure your content has. So, structuring your blogs has a greater impact on clicks that you would think.

Stick to the Word Count

We all know how important word count can be for a blog post. It’s important to know how long the word count is for a snippet also. You don’t want to waste the space talking about things irrelevant to the question. The search algorithm will prevent you from becoming featured if your word count is too high.

Using SEMRush, one of the hottest SEO tools right now can help you with this. It keeps itself informed on any update that Google releases. This allows you to keep on top of the current guidelines that Google has.

For now, the current word count for featured snippets is 40-50 words. Make sure that you can fit a small, relevant part of your blog in this limit. This allows the algorithm to display the information it needs to make a featured snippet.

Don’t Forget High-Quality Images and Videos

People notice images and videos faster than texts. Google knows this and so they favor articles that have images and videos in them. They also grant an increased chance of articles having these to become featured.

Based off of the SEO trends and marketing trends we’ve seen, you should consider inserting high-quality media like these n your articles. Not only will this help you with being a featured snippet, but it also helps with SEO.

That said, you should take the time to pick out videos and images with high engagement. You can do this by staying relevant to your topic. You can also do this by making sure that the images are not pixelated or such.

Conclusion

Learning how to get a featured snippet on Google should keep you on top of the SEO game. Want to learn more about SEO? Follow our blog for the latest and greatest tips to help you grow your business online.

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